


The Puzzle of the Martian High Commissioner

by Hoborg



Series: Martian Fruits [1]
Category: A Miracle of Science, Alan Mendelsohn the Boy from Mars - Daniel Pinkwater, Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga), Snarkout Boys - Daniel Pinkwater
Genre: Crossover, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Oh so many cameos, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 09:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3604419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoborg/pseuds/Hoborg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of Honda Tohru, post-manga — get up, make new friends, save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Puzzle of the Martian High Commissioner

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct sequel to the _Fruits Basket_ manga, taking place a few months later. I have made up several details of characters’ post-canon histories that were left unspecified (such as the city Tohru and Kyo moved to); beyond that, any inconsistencies with canon are unintentional.
> 
> It is also a sequel to _Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars_ and the _Snarkout Boys_ duology, taking place several years after the events of those books. Any inconsistencies with that canon are _intentional_ , particularly as regards Rolzup. Leonard Neeble does not appear in this story, but yeah, he and Alan are an item (and, for example, “[All We Know](/works/133322)” could perfectly well occur / have occurred in this continuity, with minor adjustments).
> 
> Something not dissimilar to the events of _A Miracle of Science_ occurred in the distant past of this story, but it’s too distant to be called a sequel. It does matter, though; by the end, you’ll see how.
> 
> All other cameos and allusions are who or what you think they are, but may be substantially changed from how you remember them.

Tohru Honda found herself in a glum sort of mood, and she wasn’t even sure why.

They’d been living in Nishinomiya for a few months now, and things had settled into a routine. She had a part-time job with the housekeeping staff of a big hotel downtown. Kyo continued his training at Shishou’s friends’ dojo, and it sounded like they might let him start teaching beginner classes himself soon. More money would be nice. She missed Uo and Hana and Yuki and the others, but she had new friends here. Some from work, some from the dojo, some met around town. Kyo was bringing Miu and Kenichi home for dinner tonight, in fact, which was why she was out shopping. Really, everything was going as well as might be expected…

… so why did she feel like she was just marking time?

“Look out!”

Tohru stopped just before crashing into a bookseller’s stall.

“Sorry, sorry, I was distracted.”

The elderly gentleman selling books gave her a big friendly smile. “Going around in circles in your mind, eh? I’ve just the thing for you.” He handed her a slim volume entitled _The Puzzle of the Martian High Commissioner_. “Occupy your thoughts with some light entertainment, stop worrying over whatever it is, and you’ll probably wake up knowing the solution. Only 500 yen.”

Tohru paid, thanked him, and darted back to her grocery shopping without really being aware of what she was doing. It was hours later, with dinner as prepared as it could be in advance, the house tidied, and tea brewing, before she remembered the book. She _could_ use something to occupy her thoughts, she realized. If only because there was no telling how long it’d be before Kyo got home. They got into the training over there and sometimes they lost all track of time.

 _The diplomatic skill of the Martian High Commissioner is legendary_ , read the first sentence. _It was Rolzup who arranged for Spaceman Spiff’s release from captivity in the slime dungeons of Carcharon 7. It was Rolzup who persuaded the Tallest of the Irken that their ambitions would be better served via technology export than galactic conquest, and it was Rolzup who masterminded the conversion of the Terran Combine from an infamous cartel of smugglers and racketeers into a respected interstellar trade federation. When the Q and the Time Lords stood on the brink of a war that threatened the very existence of all time-space-and-the-other, someone sent for Rolzup, and the dispute was resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned._

Huh. This didn’t sound like light entertainment. This sounded like _biography_. But how could there be any such person? Nobody lived on Mars, and she was pretty sure the Time Lords were from a TV show.

“…One time, my cousin Hatsuharu strung a tripwire across a footrace I was in, just to get my attention…”

Whoops! That was Kyo and friends, home for dinner. She put the book aside and hurried over to the door.

* * *

The next day, after work, Tohru decided to take the book to the noodle shop across the street from the hotel.

_The Martian High Commissioner has never declined to appear, no matter how trivial, tedious, or apparently futile the request. Rolzup routinely arranges transportation for tourists stranded on backwater planets without access to the Interstate. Rolzup personally oversaw the forty-second quadrennial Spiegelian junk food bake-off, Sargon IV having been detained by the Vegan Confederacy on charges of interstellar piracy and unhygenic food preparation. When Jor-El could not convince the Science Council that the planet Krypton was about to explode, Rolzup helped him take his case to the population at large, and then coordinated the second-largest mass evacuation in recorded history._

So far the book was all like that, so ridiculous, and yet, somehow completely plausible. It helped that, although Dr. Streetmentioner appeared honestly to believe that both Rolzup and everyone Rolzup dealt with were _real_ , he was just as baffled as Tohru was about how this could be possible. That was the puzzle in the title of the book.

_We know nothing of the Martians beyond what we may learn from studying the actions of their High Commissioner. Rolzup’s invariable negotiating position is as a neutral party who favors peace, prosperity, broad trade, the advancement and dissemination of knowledge, and ready availability of cheap, delicious cuisine; concerns shared by practically every sentient in the known universe. Rolzup guarantees treaties in the name of the Martian government, but if one must be upheld by force, it is always some other neutral who intervenes, ‘at the request of the High Commissioner:’ the Zentraedi, perhaps, or the krogans, or (on one most memorable occasion) the Borg. Rolzup brings assistants to especially complex situations, but apart from them, no one has ever credibly claimed to be a Martian, and no one at all will admit to knowing where this Mars place might be._

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?” Tohru looked up to see a foreign woman, about the same age as herself, holding a noodle bowl and smiling apologetically. “It’s pretty full in here.”

“Of course, please, sit. How do you like Japan? My name is Honda Tohru.”

“I’ve only been here a few days, but so far it’s been nice. My name is Bentley Saunders Harrison Matthews III, but call me Rat—everyone does. Please excuse my terrible command of your language, which I mostly learned from giant monster movies.”

“Oh! It’s not so bad. I can try to speak English if it’s easier for you.”

“I can _understand_ you perfectly, because of the fish in my ear.”

“Er, I don’t think you meant to say ‘because of the fish in my ear.’”

“No, that’s right. I have a fish in my left ear, that translates what people say to me. But it uses, um, mind waves? so it only works face to face.”

“Denpa waves! My friend Hana-chan can use them to tell whether people are happy or sad or upset. I’ve never heard of a _fish_ though.”

“It’s an, er, I don’t know the word. It was created by people. But not Earth people. I got it from my friend Alan Mendelsohn. He’s from Mars. Not the one in this solar system, of course.”

Tohru looked down at her book, but before she could say anything, the door crashed open and an older man in a sharp gray Western suit (which, however, did not at all go with his straw hat) came into the restaurant, waving his arms and shouting in English—“Rat! Rat! They’re going to immanentize the Eschaton!”

Rat looked at the man, then at her noodles, then said slowly and clearly: “In the next fifteen minutes, Terwilliger?”

“Of course not! Nothing of cosmic significance ever happens in the middle of local afternoon. We should have till sundown at least.”

“Then get some noodles, sit down, and explain in your indoor voice.” Rat turned back to Tohru. “I regret my uncle’s manners. His nerves haven’t been the same since the third time he was kidnapped by Wallace Nussbaum.”

“Wallace Nussbaum, the master criminal?!”

“The very same. We are here because two weeks ago Nussbaum purchased forty-three million daikon radishes all at once, and we can’t figure out why.”

“That’s a strange thing to do!” Tohru shrugged. “All I know about him is, a few years ago he put a trailer on all the movies, bragging about his escape from the Chateau d’If, wherever that is. And he’s rumored to be working with the Yami.”

At this point Rat’s uncle, bearing the biggest bowl of noodles the restaurant would give him, sat down at the one remaining seat at Tohru’s table. “Hello! Who’s your friend, Rat?” He switched to perfectly accented Japanese. “I am Bentley’s uncle, Flipping Hades Terwilliger. You may call me Flipping.”

“This is Honda Tohru,” said Rat. “She was just telling me that Nussbaum might be working with the Yami.”

“Is that so?” said Flipping. “That would close a gap in my understanding of the situation.”

“So tell us about it already.”

Flipping removed a map from the inside pocket of his suit and laid it out in the middle of the table. “You were right: the operation is being run from that warehouse on the north end of town. I found shipping manifests, and instructions to the stevedores. All of the radishes have been shipped to these nine cities around Osaka Bay. Does that outline remind you of anything, Rat?”

Rat made a face. “Berryman’s parrot.”

“Yes. Nine warehouses in each city, nine cold rooms in each warehouse, nine pallets in each cold room, nine crates on each pallet. The same layout at each scale. I couldn’t open a crate, but I think you see where this is going.”

“I’m sorry, what’s Berryman’s parrot?” Tohru interrupted.

“A notoriously dangerous shape—looking at a fully detailed drawing will kill you,” Flipping said, “but that’s only the most obvious of its effects. The daikon radish is not as psychically potent as the common avocado, but it has a natural resonance with the denpa waves produced by an adept in state twenty-six. Formed from radishes, the parrot will contain, focus, and amplify those waves, until they punch a hole in the Veil between dimensions.” He pointed at Osaka Bay. “A very large hole.”

“Disaster. XK-class reality incursion,” Rat said, somehow simultaneously gleeful and morbid. “Infovores swarm onto this plane…best case scenario, nothing survives in a five hundred kilometer radius, and that assumes the hole closes after the radishes are gone…what am I missing? Nussbaum is many things, but we’ve never suspected him of wanting to destroy the world.”

“It’s not meant to open into todash space,” Flipping said. He laid a small poster, advertising a martial arts exhibition that evening on the grounds of a nearby shrine, on top of the map. “I knew this had to be related, but until you mentioned the Yami, Honda-san, I couldn’t figure out how. These events are occurring in twenty-three cities and towns around the bay, including all the cities where radishes are stored. _Their_ locations outline the ninth sefirot, Yesod.”

“Yesod,” Rat echoed. “Foundation. Structure. _Permanence_. A stable multiway Interstate junction. Another Bermuda Triangle, smack in the middle of Osaka Bay…maybe we should be _helping_ him?”

“Well, I can’t say I hate the idea, apart from the inconvenience to the local fishing fleet, and to global shipping,” Flipping said, “but consider that Nussbaum’s still working for the REALTOR®s, and they aren’t satisfied just to control land transactions in North America.”

“Point. What do we do about it? We have, what, five hours?” Rat tapped the start time for the exhibition, seven PM.

“Um, I’m sure this is too obvious,” Tohru said, “but what if we moved the radishes? They have to be in these positions or it won’t work, right?”

“Right. Yesod won’t do anything by itself,” Flipping agreed. “I like it, but I don’t see how we’re going to get enough trucks and drivers in the time we have…”

“My friend Amano-chan runs a pâtissière here in town,” Tohru said. “A few months ago she told me that a fat man wearing a plaid jacket had turned up and demanded to know where he could get ten thousand kilos of baking chocolate. Of course she doesn’t keep that much on hand, so she directed him to her supplier, and he thanked her and left. Here’s where it gets interesting. The next day she needed to order more chocolate herself, but her supplier told her that their entire stock had mysteriously vanished from their warehouse overnight, and it would be a week before they could get more.”

Rat blinked. “Did this man mention someone called Sargon?”

“Yes. He told her that she had ‘earned the gratitude of Sargon’ and gave her a number to call if she ever needed help with her business.”

“ _Spiegelmen_ ,” Flipping blurted. “Yes. They’ll do anything for a new culinary experience, and a Spiegelian cargo carrier could extract all of the radishes from the warehouses, from _orbit_ , in sixty-seven minutes flat. But there probably isn’t one nearby enough to get here in time.”

“The Martians can handle that,” Rat said. “I’ll call Alan. Tohru, will your friend tell you that number?”

* * *

Less than an hour later, Tohru, Rat, Flipping, and Alan Mendelsohn (who looked like another perfectly ordinary foreign tourist) were on the roof of the disused factory across the street from one of the radish warehouses, going over Flipping’s maps with two fat men in plaid jackets. Alan had brought them in his car, and they called themselves Rimush and Zababa.

“The crates are stored in an unusual pattern within each warehouse,” Flipping was saying. “You must not replicate this pattern in your cargo hold, even temporarily. Have the transporter reorganize them into a normal cubic packing as it goes. They’re stackable four deep.”

“Even better, feed the transporter beam directly into a matter shifter with this programming,” Alan said, handing Rimush a small flat object. “It will destroy the crates and repackage the radishes in Vegan-standard produce cartons. Much more compact, and eliminates any hazard to your crew from basilisk geometry on or within the crates.”

“The radishes must all be gone before 1900 hours local time,” Rat said, “but please start as late as you can and still be sure of hitting that deadline. Nussbaum surely has a backup plan, we want to give him as little time as possible to notice that something’s wrong.”

“We will do as you suggest,” said Rimush.

“But we cannot do it from orbit,” said Zababa. “There are too many sites, and the ship will not be in transporter range of them for long enough. We will have to hover over each city for at least ten minutes. Air traffic control will certainly notice, as will anyone who happens to look up.”

Flipping frowned. “I don’t think we need to worry about a few UFO sightings by the general public, but I’ll pull some strings and get ATC to look the other way.”

“Not necessary,” said Rimush, “we’ve dealt with Japanese ATC before. This is the most challenging raid we’ve had in months. It will be good for the crew.”

“Still, you’re asking us to take risks, and our only compensation is a vegetable,” said Zababa. “One unknown to Spiegelian cuisine.”

“At home I have a book of recipes that all use daikon,” Tohru put in.

Zababa smiled. “That will do nicely, ma’am.”

Rimush smiled too. “We’ll need to prepare. Alan, you know how to contact us if the plan changes.” He took out his mobile and poked at it, and both fat men vanished in a blue-tinged shimmer of light. Tohru stared.

“Never seen someone beam out before?” Flipping said, kindly. “Tell you the truth, it gives me the willies. _I_ wouldn’t volunteer to be disassembled down to subatomic particles and reassembled elsewhere. What if the machine puts my head back on backwards?”

“There’s been _one_ documented case of that outside of lab tests, and it was probably a deliberate prank,” Alan said. “President Skroob was a _twit_.”

“I don’t see you Martians beaming yourselves around.”

“Hydramatic vehicles are more efficient and attract less attention.”

“ _Gentlemen_ ,” said Rat. “We still need to figure out what to do with Nussbaum himself.”

“Please allow my organization to take responsibility for that,” said a voice from behind Flipping. They all turned to see a woman of roughly Flipping’s age, wearing a strictly traditional black kimono with incongruously modern wraparound black sunglasses, climbing onto the roof.

“Agent た,” said Flipping. “It is good to see you again. That would be fine with me, the Bureau’s more likely to be able to contain him than those chumps at the Chateau d’If—Alan, does Mars object?”

Alan shrugged. “Mars is not officially involved, and generally prefers to let the local authorities handle a local criminal. For the record, though, we would be happy to help do something about the REALTOR®s in the long term.”

Agent た inclined her head. “Perhaps we shall discuss that later. Now, let me introduce our newest Agent, あ, who is working with me on this case.” She indicated another, rather younger woman, wearing the same traditional black kimono and modern sunglasses, who had come onto the roof during the discussion.

“—Akito-san?!” Tohru blurted.

あ frowned a little. “I’m sure you have been informed, that person is dead,” she said.

“Shigure told us you had _disappeared_ ,” Tohru protested.

“Honda-san, you are naturally concerned for someone who was important to your family,” あ said. “I am not surprised that Shigure refuses to understand, but I trust you will. That person could not go on as she had been, but neither could she be content with the role that he had prepared for her. She took the only route left. It is my good fortune that the Bureau had a place and a purpose to offer a dead woman.”

“Terwilliger-san, we trust the discretion of a friend of yours,” た added, “but when there is more time, you will explain to Honda-san the nature and purpose of the Bureau, and our understanding with you and anyone else we permit to remember us.”

Flipping executed a formal bow. “Naturally.”

* * *

The six of them adjourned to a nearby tea house that Agent た was fond of, and they spent the next few hours discussing how best to confront Nussbaum. Tohru made a couple more phone calls. Flipping told the story of how he and た had met (it had to do with extraterrestrial worms living in a burnt-out volcano in Africa) and Alan told the rather more plausible story of how he and Rat had met (silent film festival at NYU). Around 6:30 Zababa called Alan to say they were done collecting radishes, and then they all walked over to the shrine, where an older, foreign gentleman was giving some last-minute instructions to the martial arts exhibition troupe.

“Nussbaum!” shouted Flipping.

The older gentleman looked away from the troupe, and a delighted grin broke out on his face. “Flipping! Rat! Other presumptive do-gooders! Welcome! You are just in time to witness my greatest triumph!”

“About that,” Agent た said. “I’m sure you are aware that the Revised Intersystem Agreement (chapter fourteen, section 3.23.R-ד-viii paragraph 9) prohibits the establishment of a permanent Interstate junction within an inhabited environment by agents of any polity external to that environment.” She let that sink in for a few seconds. “CEASE AND DESIST.”

Nussbaum snorted. “Very funny. Who do you think you are, the Martian High Commissioner? Besides, the parrot is already active. If you don’t want to see Kansai reduced to a gray waste of ash and hungry ghosts, you’d better not interfere.”

“Did you seriously think we would stand here and let you explain your master-stroke to us,” Alan said, “if there remained the slightest chance of it actually succeeding? The parrot was dismantled thirty-five minutes ago.”

“Well, in that case,” said Nussbaum. “I suppose I shall have to settle for your meddling heads, in a _bucket_. GET THEM!”

“I believe that’s our cue,” said Miu, as she, Kisara, Renka, and Kōsaka-sensei stepped out of the shadows one on each side of the square.

The martial arts troupe looked at each other, frowning, and their leader said “Your contract does not cover this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nussbaum snapped. “You outnumber them three to one! And half of them are teenagers!”

“Excuse me, we were hired to perform a _demonstration_ of traditional sword and empty-hand forms. You may be coordinating this event, but we do not take orders from you in any other capacity. I recall nothing about beating up teenagers and tourists, and we _certainly_ did not agree to take on four of the most skilled martial artists in the prefecture.”

Nussbaum pointed at Rat and Flipping, his hand trembling with rage. “The demonstration is useless now! Do you know how many times _those two pathetic Americans_ have foiled my plans? Avocadoes! Werewolves! I chose Japan for this event specifically so they would not become involved, AND HERE THEY ARE ANYWAY!”

Alan spoke up, but his voice wasn’t his own. It had developed an eerie (yet somehow reassuring) reverberation, and though he spoke no louder than normal, it cut through all other sound and captured everyone’s attention. “You must realize this is not going to accomplish anything.”

All of the color drained out of Nussbaum’s face.

“Now, you can surrender to the MIB,” Alan went on, “or we can tell the Shadow Proclamation where you are and who you’re working for.”

“You wouldn’t,” Nussbaum said shakily. “You know what they do to people.”

“We know what _you_ do to people,” Flipping said. “Be thankful Osgood Sigerson isn’t here.”

Nussbaum seemed to deflate a little. “Fine. But your Bureau won’t hold me any more than the Chateau, or Alcatraz, or…”

“Who said anything about imprisonment?” said Agent あ. “We have _work_ for you, Nussbaum.”

* * *

Tohru would have liked to insist that all her new friends come back to the apartment she shared with Kyo, but there really wasn’t space for that many houseguests, and Rat and Flipping had already paid for a hotel room. Rimush stopped by briefly to pick up the recipe book, but his ship needed to get back to its regular route. Alan, however, said he wouldn’t mind a couch to crash on, or a floor would do, even.

The next morning, Tohru had intended to get up early and make breakfast, as was only proper, but having been through all that excitement, she didn’t manage to wake up until after Kyo left for the dojo. When she did get into the kitchen, she discovered Alan had already prepared a sumptuous meal, and was just setting places for two.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to leave you to do all this all by yourself—”

“Please, do not regard it! I like to cook, and I always try to cook breakfast when I stay at someone’s house. My way of saying thank you. Besides, I wanted to talk to you in private about something.” He waved her to a seat. “Eat a bit, then I’ll explain.”

Tohru decided she might as well go along—it was all of a piece with the way these foreigners did things, taking everything in stride no matter how ridiculous. It reminded her of Momiji.

After they’d both had a chance to eat, Alan spoke up again: “I need to start by telling you a story. I don’t know how far you got in that book,” he pointed at _The Puzzle of the Martian High Commissioner_ , which had somehow found its way onto the table, “so if you’ve already heard part of it, just let me know.”

“That book is a little hard to believe,” Tohru said.

“Oh, most of it is true, but a lot of it was less epic than Streetmentioner makes it sound. Let me begin like this: Once upon a time, there was a planet called Mars.”

“But ‘not the one in this solar system,’ eh?”

“Correct. But it was very similar to the Mars you know of. To begin with, it was Class K: cold, dry, thin atmosphere, no liquid water, no protective magnetic field. It never hosted complex biological life, although it may have had simple self-replicators in the distant past; opinions differ. Also, like your Mars, it was the next planet out from a planet called Earth, and that planet _did_ develop complex biological life, including, eventually, an intelligent species who looked almost exactly like you and me.”

“Wait, but when Shiraki-sensei taught us about evolution, she said we had no reason to think intelligent aliens ought to look anything like people.”

“Shiraki-sensei is correct, in theory, and yet nearly 40% of all known intelligent species share the ‘humanoid’ body plan, more than any other. There’s no evidence for anything but parallel evolution, and the biologists have no idea why and it bugs them. —The planet being named ‘Earth’, though, that’s perfectly normal. Just about every intelligent species gives its home planet a name that translates as either ‘Earth’ or ‘Ocean.’ Sometimes ‘Forest.’”

“Uhh, okay, go on.”

“So, the natives of this ‘Earth’ developed space travel, and one of the first places they went was their ‘Mars,’ which they promptly set about remaking to be more like home. No small task! It took centuries and required the development of entirely new sciences and crafts, and those developments inspired other developments. By the time the work was complete, Martian civilization had also achieved faster-than-light travel and communication, von Neumann probes, and a bicameral collective consciousness.”

Tohru blinked at him. “I don’t know what those are.”

“Er, the important thing to understand is that those things let them explore their entire galaxy in only a little more than a thousand years. Sadly, there were no other intelligent life forms anywhere. Or more precisely, there _had_ been a few, but they were all dead.”

“They must have felt very lonely.”

Alan nodded. “Fortunately, they had another avenue of exploration. The terraformers had learned to manipulate chance, to bring _all_ the possible outcomes of an event into potentiality and then choose the most favorable. Now when you can do this, it is only a small step further to be able to travel among might-have-beens. To explore all the histories that _could_ have happened. And it occurred to someone that there should be alternate histories where everyone else _wasn’t_ dead. And so it proved.”

“So what did they do, move to another history? …wait a minute.” Tohru pointed at the book. “This is why Dr. Streetmentioner says no one knows where Mars is.”

“Just so. Lots of timelines have an Earth with a Mars, but only a tiny handful of them have an _inhabited_ Mars, because making Mars a place anyone would want to live turns out to be ridiculously difficult. Mostly, Earthlings decide to build gigantic space habitats out of asteroids, or they go straight to interstellar colonization. So we all go around saying we’re from Mars and either they’ve never heard of it or they think we must be joking.”

Tohru smiled wryly. “You know, even after everything that’s happened, somehow I still couldn’t quite believe you weren’t joking about Mars.”

Alan got a faraway look in his eyes. “I went to school on this Earth, in America. I told lots of people I was from Mars, but only one person _really_ believed me. (That was before I met Rat and her friends.)”

“Then, there really is a Martian High Commissioner?”

“Yes. Rolzup was there last night, when Nussbaum had to be talked down.”

“That was _you_.”

“I belong to a fully realized fractal collective consciousness. My name is Alan Mendelsohn, but…” his voice changed as it had the previous night, taking on that eerie-yet-reassuring, attention-capturing echo, and his pupils dilated a bit—no, it was that the irises had become darker— “ _my_ name is Rolzup, for we are the High Commission, the collective will of those Martians who concern themselves with diplomacy and the promotion of galactic civilization.” He smiled. It was still Alan’s smile. “And that brings me to the point of this conversation. Honda-san, we would like to invite you to join us.”

“Wah?! I’m not a diplomat! Or a Martian!”

“You don’t have to be born either. There would be some training, yes, but look—yesterday you stumbled into a situation completely beyond your experience, and you were unfazed. You offered perfect strangers assistance without hesitation. Your knowledge and contacts were instrumental to the complete, peaceful resolution of what could otherwise have been a planetary catastrophe. And if I hadn’t been there, I expect _you_ would have talked Nussbaum down. You are exactly the sort of person the Martian High Commissioner should be.”

“Um. I’ll have to think about it, but it _does_ sound more interesting than my housekeeping job…”

Alan blinked and his voice went back to normal. “It pays better, too. Anyway, you don’t have to make up your mind right now.” He put a business card on top of the book. “This number will reach me—Alan, that is, not Rolzup. Rolzup’s number is in the book already.”

“It is? I guess I hadn’t got that far.”

“Oh, do keep reading. As I said, Streetmentioner does like to spice events up a bit, but it will still give you a reasonable idea of what you’d be in for.”

“Would it involve a lot of travel? Kyo can take care of himself but he’d still miss me, he hasn’t had a lot of friends in his life…”

Alan grinned. “It _does_ involve a lot of travel, but that is also one of the best perks of the job: you get your very own Dorbzeldge.”

“A _what_?”

“A Dorbzeldge. Looks like a car, folds up into your pocket, unfolds into a camper-van, unfolds _again_ into an incident response base; fully equipped for travel in time, space, and the other. As a car it’s not very fast, but you don’t need it to be, because the Interstate is just a gear shift away. You will _always_ be able to make it home for dinner.”

* * *

Tohru watched as Alan drove his “Dorbzeldge” away—it still looked just like an ordinary car, even though she’d seen him take it out of his pocket and unfold it. But then, halfway down a block, he started to turn, as if onto a ramp that wasn’t there…and instead of crashing into a tree, the car vanished before her eyes.

 _Is that what he meant about the Interstate?_ she wondered. _Nobody ever did explain what that was. Maybe it’s in the book? Maybe I can get Rat to tell me._

Smiling a little at the thought, Tohru went back inside to prepare for her day. She _was_ going to think about this … job offer, but she had more immediate plans. Rat and Flipping were _not_ going to leave Japan with only a vague idea that it had been nice! She was going to show them _all_ the fun things in Nishinomiya, starting with Amano’s pâtissière.


End file.
